After Dark

by Beverly Barton

  “Then, Johnny Mack is a bastard, just like me.”

  Lane gritted her teeth in an effort to stop herself from loudly and vehemently correcting Will. Calmly, she said, “Don’t use that word to describe yourself. Not ever.”

  “Sorry, Mama. Does illegitimate sound better?” he asked sarcastically.

  “You have every right to be angry and confused, and if I could spare you from the ugly truth, I would. God knows, I’ve spent fourteen years trying to protect you.”

  “So, my father really was a white trash, high school dropout bastard who did yard work for a living and screwed around?”

  “If you’re trying to upset me by using foul language, then you’ve succeeded,” Lane told him. “If you need to lash out at me, then go ahead. I think I’m strong enough to take it.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you, Mama. I just want you to level with me about my real father.”

  “All right. Johnny Mack was everything Kent told you he was, but…there was a lot more to Johnny Mack, too. He was a very handsome young man, and practically every female in the county found him fascinating. He’d grown up the hard way. Without a father. With a mother who neglected him. And with no money. He wasn’t a nice boy from a good family. But he wasn’t all bad either, despite what Kent would have had you believe.”

  “What kind of guy gets a girl pregnant and walks out on her?” Will asked, his jaw tense, his dark eyes narrowed as he sought an answer from his mother.

  “He never knew Sharon was pregnant, and by the time she told me, none of us had any idea where he was.” There was no point in telling Will that several people—including Miss Edith—had believed Johnny Mack dead.

  “So what’s he doing back here now?”

  “Lillie Mae has known for the past ten years where he was. She sent for him. She thinks that you and I need him.”

  Will shot up off the stairs and bounded down into the foyer. “Why would she think we need him? We don’t want him here, do we? If he’d wanted to help you, to repay you for saving his life, why wasn’t he around when Kent was treating you like dirt?”

  “What do you know about my saving Johnny Mack’s life?”

  “Lillie Mae told me about some men beating him up and dumping him into the river and your bringing him home and the two of you taking care of him. She told me tonight, when you were in the living room talking to him.”

  “I see.”

  “You told him to go back to wherever he came from, didn’t you? You told him we didn’t want him in our lives. Lillie Mae was wrong. We’ve got each other. We don’t need him.”

  “Johnny Mack won’t leave just because you want him to. He’s determined to help me, if I’m arrested for Kent’s murder. And he wants to meet you.”

  “Well, I don’t want to meet him.”

  “He invited himself for lunch tomorrow.”

  “And you told him it was all right?”

  Lane shook her head. “No, of course not. I didn’t say it was all right. But you have to understand that Johnny Mack isn’t the type of man to take no for an answer. He never was. If he wants something, he goes after it.”

  “And what does he want, Mama? Does he want you?”

  “He wants you, Will. He wants his son.”

  “He’s a little late, don’t you think? I don’t want him. And I will not sit down and share a meal with him. Do you hear me? If he shows up here tomorrow, you tell him that I said as far as I’m concerned, he can go straight to hell.”

  James prepared his wife a whiskey on the rocks and handed it to her. Edith stopped pacing the floor to accept the liquor.

  “You saw him. You talked to him. And you’re sure he’s really Johnny Mack Cahill?” Edith glared at Buddy Lawler, who stood, hat in hand, in the center of the Persian rag in the library.

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s Johnny Mack all right. He’s the same—swaggering, cocky, belligerent—but he’s different, too. After what happened fifteen years ago, you’d think when I gave him a warning, it would have at least scared him a little. But it didn’t. He’s not scared.”

  “What did you find out about him?”

  “Not a damn thing from him, but I’m having a check run on him, and we should have some answers by tomorrow, if not sooner,” Buddy said.

  “He’s come back because of Lane,” Edith said, then sipped on her drink. “There’s no way he could have found out about Will, not unless…. Maybe he and Lane have kept in touch all these years.”

  “Well, whatever his reasons for being here are, he told me he was staying until he got good and ready to leave. And he gave me a message to deliver to you, Miss Edith.”

  “Why that cocky young son of a bitch!” Edith downed the remainder of her drink, coughing when the strong liquor burned a hot trail down her throat. “What was the message?”

  “Tell Miss Edith that trouble is back in town and there’s a bad moon rising, so she’d better watch out.”

  “He’s threatening me! I want you to arrest him and—”

  “You can’t arrest the man for sending you an unpleasant message,” James said.

  Edith snapped her head around and glowered at her husband. Her pipsqueak of a husband. What had she ever seen in James Ware? “Of course Johnny Mack is going to be trouble. That’s all he ever was. If we don’t find a way to get rid of him—”

  “Perhaps you’d better find out more about exactly who Johnny Mack Cahill is now, my dear, before you make plans for Buddy to eliminate him,” James suggested. “Besides, he didn’t do such a good job of it the first time, did he?”

  “Damn it, I thought he was dead,” Buddy said. “Kent thought he was dead. Hell, we all did. Me and the boys had beaten the crap out of him before we tossed him into the river. No normal, ordinary man could have survived.”

  Edith clutched the empty glass in her hand. “Yes, well, we all know that Johnny Mack wasn’t and no doubt still isn’t just an ordinary man.”

  There had never been anything ordinary about her first husband’s bastard son. From childhood, the boy had been extraordinarily good looking. But then John Graham had been a handsome man. And despite the fact she had been a trailer trash whore, Faith Cahill had been strikingly beautiful. Edith had always known about her husband’s philandering ways and had heard rumors about Faith’s child, that he hadn’t belonged to Faith’s husband, who had been killed in a barroom brawl when her child was an infant. Then the first time she had seen the boy, when he was six, on the street in town with his mother, she had known Johnny Mack was John’s son. As much his son as Kent had been. Except that Kent bore the Graham name and was the heir apparent to the Graham fortune.

  “Should I be jealous, my dear?” James asked, a smirking grin on his round, ruddy face. “A man doesn’t like to know his wife considers another man extraordinary.”

  Edith whirled around, rage in her eyes, and threw her empty glass straight at her husband. He ducked just in time to prevent contact with his head. The crystal tumbler hit the edge of the marble hearth behind him and shattered into jagged shards.

  “You’re a stupid fool, James.” Edith gave him a murderous glare, then turned back to Buddy. “Find out everything you can about Johnny Mack and call me, even if it’s at two in the morning. I’m not going to allow that piece of trash to come back into my town and threaten me. And if he thinks he’s going to claim Will as his son, then he’d better think again. He doesn’t deserve to be a father to that boy.”

  “I’ll go down to the station right now,” Buddy said. “And I won’t leave until I get some information about Johnny Mack.”

  “Yes. Fine.” Edith dismissed him with a wave of her hand. “See yourself out.”

  When Buddy left the room, James turned to go, but before he reached the door, Edith called after him. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going upstairs, to my room,” he replied. “I’ll see you in the morning, my dear.”

  Edith watched her husband walk away from her. Groaning, she ran a nervous hand over her
sleek, short hair. After John’s death, James had been attentive and caring, and before they had married the sex had been rather exciting. James had been, if nothing else, an eager lover. The fact that he was nearly twenty years younger than she and far from rich hadn’t bothered her then. He had agreed to sign a prenuptial agreement that protected her assets. As far as the age difference was concerned, even her worst enemies would have to admit that Edith Graham Ware didn’t look her age.

  But if she had it to do over again, she wouldn’t have married James. She would have enjoyed an affair with him and then moved on. Her husband was attentive, agreeable and often reminded her of a lapdog. He tried his best to please her, but the subservience which she demanded from him was the very thing that she hated most about him. Although she had grown to hate John Graham, the man had never bored her. In or out of the bedroom. And truth be told, she had found the fact that she couldn’t dominate him highly stimulating. They had been two strong-willed people who, when they came together, exploded into flames.

  And it had been the same with his son. Only more so. What Johnny Mack had lacked in skill as a young lover, he had more than made up for in stamina and lustiness. A quiver of sexual longing spiraled up inside Edith at the thought of Johnny Mack. What would he be like now, as a man and as a lover?

  “You called James a fool,” Edith said aloud, then huffed softly. “But you’re the fool, Edith, for entertaining thoughts about that man.”

  Johnny Mack hadn’t come back to Noble’s Crossing to renew his affair with her, of that she was certain. If he had returned for any woman, it was Lane.

  Smiling softly, Edith glided across the room, removed the lid from the whiskey and poured the liquor into a glass. She lifted the tumbler to her mouth and took a sip.

  But Lane would soon be unavailable. She was going to be arrested, tried and convicted of Kent’s murder. It was only a matter of time. A matter of giving Buddy and DA Wes Stevens their orders. A matter of calling in a few favors. She wanted Lane punished. She wanted Will and Mary Martha protected. And she wanted Johnny Mack to learn that around here, she still ruled the roost.

  Chapter 10

  James Ware made kissing sounds into the telephone and sighed contentedly when he heard Arlene’s throaty giggles. More than anything, he wished he were with her tonight. In her bed, in her arms. Hell, just in her!

  “I miss you, Jimmy boy. I miss you every minute we’re apart.”

  “I miss you, too, sugar. You know how bad I want you right now, don’t you?”

  “Not bad enough to leave that big old mansion and come across the Chickasaw River to my house.”

  “Now, you know I can’t sneak out at night. I can’t take a chance that one of the servants might see me and tell Edith. I know for a fact that your friend Jackie already suspects something’s going on between us.”

  “She’s just guessing. I haven’t told her a thing. I promise I haven’t. I wouldn’t do anything to make problems for you. For us. It’s just I’m so tired of waiting. I want us to get married and have a real life together.”

  “Try to be patient just a little while longer, sugar. Just a few more transactions and I’ll have enough money for us to get away from Noble’s Crossing forever.”

  “You aren’t doing anything awfully illegal, are you?” There was genuine concern in Arlene’s voice. “You’ve told me that you’re ciphering money out of Miss Edith’s accounts, but I don’t understand how—”

  “Don’t you worry your pretty head about it,” James assured her.

  Hell, yes, there was something illegal about what he was doing, but he was counting on Edith being too damned embarrassed, when she found out, to actually have him hunted down and prosecuted. Besides, he planned to change his name. He had already arranged for phony birth certificates and social security cards for himself, Arlene and her kids. Those alone had cost him a pretty penny. He had a tidy little sum in his Swiss bank account, but not quite enough.

  As long as Edith never learned that her precious Kent had discovered the discrepancies in her accounts and confronted him, then he was safe. How the hell that drunken lout’s brain had functioned well enough for him to have figured out what was going on, James would never know. But Kent sure wasn’t going to tell anybody. Not now.

  James smiled. Nope. Kent Graham wasn’t ever going to cause anybody trouble again. Not him. Not Lane. Not Will. Not poor Mary Martha.

  “I can’t help worrying about you,” Arlene said. “You know how much I love you, how much I’ve always loved you.”

  “Not as much as I love you.”

  He grew hard and aching just talking to Arlene. She had always had that effect on him. When they’d first gotten back together, he had thought it was only lust, that he could have an affair with his teenage sweetheart and remain unhappily married to his rich wife. But eventually he had realized just how much he enjoyed being with a woman who made him feel like a real man. And Arlene had that knack—making him feel ten feet tall. For that alone, he loved her.

  “Give me some more kisses,” she said.

  He puckered his lips and smacked a second series of silly kisses into the telephone. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Close up the shop early for lunch.”

  “Dream about me tonight?”

  “I have wet dreams about you every night, sugar.”

  She giggled again. “Bye now, lover boy.”

  “Bye.”

  James hung up the receiver and rolled over onto his back, stretching out in the walnut antique bed that was at least a hundred years older than he was. No telling how many generations of Grahams had slept in this bed. He eased his hand inside his pajamas, slid his fingers down over his belly and encircled his erect penis. He wondered how many men had lain in this bed, an unwelcoming wife sleeping across the hall, and jerked off while they were thinking about another woman.

  Johnny Mack checked the digital clock on the nightstand. Eleven-fifteen. He sat in the armchair, the only chair in his motel room, propped his sock feet up on the bed and leaned back his head. Stretching his arms, he groaned. Who had said, “the more things change, the more they stay the same”?

  Noble’s Crossing and its inhabitants were not the same as they had been fifteen years ago, and yet Johnny Mack Cahill was still persona non grata, as much now as in the past. He laughed at the irony. His chuckles sounded to him more like self-pitying groans. The funny thing was that fifteen years ago he wouldn’t have known what persona non grata meant. Now the phrase and similar ones immediately came to mind and easily rolled off his tongue. Four years of college and eight years of sharing a home with Judge Harwood Brown had polished his rough edges and given him the ability to pass himself off as a gentleman.

  But nothing and no one had ever been able to eradicate his survival instincts, those screw-them-first-before-they-screw-you principles he had learned the hard way and at a very young age. Actually those savage instincts were what had helped him become the entrepreneurial wonder of Houston during the past ten years. A man with nothing to lose and no one to fear took chances others wouldn’t.

  When he’d told Lane he was a rich man, she had seemed unimpressed. But then, Lane and her father had been the only ones in town who hadn’t judged others by the size of their bank accounts or the prestige of their family lineage. She had been his friend when none of the other Magnolia Avenue ladies would acknowledge his presence in public. Like old Bill Noble, she had given him a chance and had actually thought he was worth the effort.

  Of course, he hadn’t been worth their efforts. Not then. But now, maybe he was. God knew he had tried to become a better man. Someone Lane would be proud of.

  Once, Lane had not only believed in him, trusted him, cared about him, but she had saved his life. That night when she’d found him beaten and half-dead, she had practically dragged him from the riverbank to her backdoor. Then she had hidden him away for three days, until he could stand on his own two legs and walk out on her. He had been tempted to take her with him, to show Kent Gra
ham and everyone else in Noble’s Crossing that their sweet, little princess had given up everything just to be with him. But he had cared too much for Lane, respected her too much, to drag her down to his level. He’d thought that taking her with him would ruin her life. Now he wondered if leaving her behind had achieved the same result.

  Reaching behind him to where his jacket hung on the back of the chair, he felt around inside the pocket, removed his cellular phone and dialed the unlisted number of an old friend. A fellow beneficiary of Judge Harwood Brown’s generosity and unique style of reforming bad boys.

  “This had better be important,” Quinn Cortez said, when he answered the phone.

  “Hello to you, too.”

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Not midnight yet,” Johnny Mack said. “And if I remember correctly, you’re a night owl and seldom go to sleep before twelve.”

  “Yeah, well, a man goes to bed for other reasons than to sleep.”

  “Sorry.” Johnny Mack chuckled. Quinn’s reputation with the ladies was more than gossip. He didn’t think he had ever seen his friend with the same woman twice. “I wouldn’t be calling if it weren’t important. So, tell whoever you’ve got there in bed with you that I won’t keep you long.”

  “Get to the damn point, Cahill.”

  “I need you to be ready to take a plane out of Houston at a moment’s notice. You’ll fly into Huntsville, Alabama, then rent a car and drive over to Noble’s Crossing.”

  “Want to tell me why I’m going to do this?”

  “Because there’s a good chance that my son’s mother will be arrested for her ex-husband’s murder and she’ll need the best criminal lawyer money can buy.”

  “That would be me, old friend. So, how about filling me in on some details? I had no idea you had a kid.”

  “Neither did I,” Johnny Mack admitted. “I’ll fill you in on the details later. By the way, when you do come to Noble’s Crossing, you’ll find me at the Four Way. It’s a cheap motel, but it serves my purposes for the time being.”